So you sit down, then stand up, and sit back down again
You move over there, then back here
You shuffle things around on the table and play with them
The cables and little speakers, the papers and disk drives
The laptop keys and the ideas of people and thoughts
Beyond the screen
You turn them off, and back on again
Drink cups of coffee, sometimes a tea, or a beer maybe
You get up, eat because you’re supposed to
You rearrange the things in your flat, the dust, the dishes
Reposition the clothes in your bedroom
Now and then you catch yourself staring out the window
Just staring, sometimes at the people in the flats opposite
Moving little things around their kitchens and bedrooms
Other times at the night sky, the streetlights, you breathe the cool air
You go outside, and come back in, or stand half in, half out
Talk to people on the phone, silently, with poor grammar
You write things down, lists and reminders
Scraps of paper with orders and instructions and numbers
Or short rhyming couplets, or not, or many
You look for things you’ve lost, and play music, and go to work
You come back here and find things and type this poem
Or sing, or make noises from objects that are around
You light little fires and watch actors act and dancers dance
And blow them out, the fires, that is
And sleep or wake up and turn in a slow circle, slightly bemused
You scratch your chin, that slow absent-minded scrape of stubble
You’re staring again
You ask yourself “what am I doing?”, occasionally
And wonder if it… hope that it will all make sense one day
May 2013 Derek Wilson
